(2025) Noise reduction in the community of philosophical inquiry

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Journal / Book Title

Journal of Philosophy of Education

Abstract

In a community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), as the term is used in the Philosophy for Children (P4C) tradition, people with diverse experiences, beliefs, and values discuss a philosophical question of common interest and are prompted by a facilitator to challenge and build on one another’s ideas, share relevant experiences, consider emotional responses, imagine new possibilities, and self-correct their understanding, including their value commitments. One goal of the CPI is to produce better judgements, and this goal is threatened by the presence of noise: unwanted variability in judgements that would, ideally, be identical. We argue that although noise is likely to emerge in the CPI because it is a context where participants share intuitive judgements with one another in the context of deliberation, facilitators can and should, nevertheless, take steps to reduce it.

Published Citation

Yarmel, Aaron and Maughn Rollins Gregory (2025) Noise reduction in the community of philosophical inquiry. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2025, qhaf059, https://doi.org/10.1093/jopedu/qhaf059.

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